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Compared to Deidesheim this place is a zoo. We were up and out of the hotel about 10am and the streets were filling quickly. So far so good!
Today was our first full day in Florence, Italy.  In our exploration of the city, we learned a few things:

1. Compared to small town Germany, Florence is a dirty dirty dirty city.
2. Some museums don’t open until the afternoon on Sunday.
3. Turns out everything is closed on Mondays in this city.
4. Tourism isn’t so bad when you’re looking a menu written in English.
5. It is harder to find dairy-free food here than in Germany, despite being able to read the menus.
6. When in doubt, join a line (we saw a pretty church that appeared to be closed to the public, but there was a line near by with a sign that said “free entrance”.  Turns out the line was part of a 2-day special event allowing tourists and locals into the inner courtyards of the beautiful church).
7. Most of this city appears to be older than the 16th century (Renaissance was good to this city).
8. We learned they glue the paper onto the gelato cones (Nashon learned it tastes gross when you know it’s there but still eat it).
9. They have more knock off hand bags for sale here than in China (including right in front of the actual Gucci store).

We spent the morning just walking around, and getting lost and finding ourselves again.  We visited the “old bridge”, Ponte Vecchio, where stores were built on the edge of the bridge (and out over the river), where we looked at some very pretty jewelry.  Nashon said it might be fun to buy Jamie some jewelry instead of an art piece as our souvenir.  From there we walked along the water to Palazzo Vecchio where we had lunch and enjoyed a cappuccino for our friend Kathryn (who used to live here).  We also visited the Duomo (St. Mary’s Cathedral), where we purchased a pretty print of the building.  Nashon really wanted to go to the Galleria dell’ Academia where we saw Michelangelo’s David, among other statues and paintings.  We walked from here to get gelato and walk through the San Lorenzo Market (man, there are a lot of knock off merchandise in this country)!  From here we started to look for dinner, and to waste some time before going home when we saw the Santa Maria Novella church and walked over to take some pictures.  This is where we had nothing better to do, and joined a near by line.  This line took us through the inner courtyards of the church to see all of the frescoes that were painted 400-500 years ago; many of them outside in direct sunlight.  Nashon commented that they were in great condition for being so old and exposed to the elements; sorry, no pictures allowed here either (a theme in many of the museums in this town).  We finished our night with a divine dinner at a local restaurant called “Il Porcospino”, where Jamie cheated on her no-dairy diet and enjoyed the BEST lasagna ever.  Even with many of the museums closed tomorrow, the day should be full and quite fun (though even more tiring for our poor feet).